Grab, Southeast Asia's superapp is expanding its grocery delivery service across the region, partnering with S&R supermarket, best known for members-only discounts, in the Philippines.

Other retail partners include Indomaret, a convenience store chain with over 15,000 stores in Indonesia; Big C, a hypermarket chain with over 1,000 outlets in Thailand; Lotus’s Malaysia (formerly Tesco Malaysia) with over 62 locations and Mega Market, a leading wholesaler and distributor of grocery products in Vietnam.

Online grocery shopping is the fastest-growing segment in Southeast Asia this 2021, with most consumers planning to either maintain or increase their at-home online spending on groceries.

Euromonitor International projects the segment will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24 percent over the next five years, reaching $11.9 billion by 2025.

“Eighty-five percent of our GrabMart users in the second quarter 2021 came from GrabFood," according to Demi Yu, Regional Head of Deliveries, Grab.

"This shows our offering is particularly attractive to Southeast Asia’s mobile-first consumers who value the ease of accessing multiple everyday services, from on-demand mobility, to food delivery and grocery shopping, in one app," she elaborated.

"We are excited to welcome some of the largest grocery retailers in Southeast Asia onto our platform," Yu added. "Together, we can ride on the rising instant delivery trend and provide consumers greater variety and convenience through GrabMart.”

With a growing number of supermarket partnerships across the region, Grab plans to trial “Shopper”, a shopping assistant solution, in selected supermarkets this year.

Built into the Grab Driver superapp, “Shopper” is a digital shopping list that enables retail staff to pick and pack consumers’ grocery orders as they move through shopping aisles.

Retail staff can notify consumers in real-time if items are sold out, suggest potential replacement options, and send photos of the items through the in-app GrabChat feature.

Any changes to consumers’ original orders will be clearly reflected in the Grab user app for transparency.

“As online grocery shopping gains popularity, we are seeing consumers placing larger grocery orders on GrabMart," said Yu. "Our new shopping assistant solution will improve the experience for both our retail partners and consumers. This is one of the many enhancements we are working on to support this rapidly growing business.”